TNT Scrap has played a big role in the success of our business over the past 5 years. They pay the highest prices and the service is always excellent!

Stephen L.President - S&K Contracting

About TNT Scrap Metal

TNT purchases all scrap metals at our Brooklyn, NY facility. We buy from Individuals, Construction Sites, Business, Industry, and Government. We are a top premium metal recycling buyer in the New York area.

TNT Scrap Metal is one of the premier recycling centers in the greater Brooklyn, NY area. Servicing our area seven days a week - 24 hours a day. TNT Scrap Metal helps businesses and individuals reach their recycling goals.

We offer you cash for your scrap metals based on the daily market prices and the condition of the scrap metal. Our goal is to provide the most value for your recycled scrap metal.

We provide Recycling Containers, Dumpsters and Roll Off services to make it easy for Brooklyn area businesses and construction sites to recycle valuable scrap metals like aluminum, copper and stainless steel.

Brooklyn residents who buy and sell scrap metal say, like many other industries, business has plummeted amid the economic recession.
According to Tim Fulton, who owns TNT Scrap Metal in Williamsburg, a van loaded with scrap metal pieces, like refrigerators, could bring in up to $600 before the recession. Now, Fulton says, the same load would earn less than $100.
Fulton, and other Brooklyn residents in the industry, say scrap metal prices have dropped almost 70 percent. Due to the global recession, the local scrap metal market is suffering.

Experts say a decrease in production and manufacturing in countries like China, which used to fuel the U.S. scrap metal market, has damaged the scrap metal industry.
Some residents say they will continue to collect scraps for sale, because any cash is better than nothing. TNT now pays between three and seven cents per pound, which is about half what the company paid last summer.

They waited in a queue that stretched around the block, 33 vehicles in all. Each vehicle was packed with discarded metal items: refrigerators, stoves, radiators, barbecues, a pile of aluminum joists, a dismantled child's swing set.

Benny Mineo had never seen so many competitors in his 25 years of collecting scrap metal for a living. He waited in a rickety brown van behind a truck filled with blackened iron pipes.

"The business has been terrible," said Mineo, a Staten Islander. "There's a million people out of work and that's the bottom line," he said.

"If you put a screw on the floor, somebody's gonna pick it up."

That morning, steel fetched 7 cents a pound at Cropsey Iron and Metal. A pound of nonferrous metals - such as aluminum, zinc or copper - yielded much more, up to $2. Those prices, according to the people in line, were good, but not great.

With jobs scarce amid the Great Recession, more people seem to be scavenging metal and selling it at scrap yards to make a few extra bucks. They get the metal from their own homes and backyards, construction sites and the street.

Some of them break the law, either by stealing private property or the city's property, according to Department of Sanitation officials.

Recyclable material placed on residential or commercial curbsides belongs to the city.

The Sanitation Department can impose a $2,000 fine and impound the vehicle of anyone caught taking metal off the streets. An exception: a scrapper who gets permission from the owner or a building superintendent to take an item off the street.

The city's collection of recycled material is down 12% from last year, said Kathy Dawkins, a Sanitation Department spokeswoman. "People are putting out less items on the street and conserving more," she said.

In 2008, the department picked up about 6,160 tons of recycled materials each day, roughly the weight of the metal in 39 Statues of Liberty.

The economic downturn has slowed construction projects, making less scrap metal available to collectors combing the streets.

More people and less metal means competition is fierce and sometimes desperate. Some collectors acknowledged breaking the law to generate cash.

After nine years, Reyes lost his job at a restaurant last summer. While he searched for work, he heard from a friend that he could make money collecting metal left outside people's homes on recycling days and selling it, even though it's a crime.

Six or seven nights a week, Reyes said he scours the curbs of residential streets. On a good run, his efforts might lead to a $70 payday at a scrap yard.

Many scrap metal collectors outside of Cropsey Iron and Metal said they'd been fined and had their vehicles impounded in the last year.

Reyes insisted he had no choice.

"I've got three kids and I've had to support them," he said.

The absence of an expected general, larger share issue was pushing up the shares, Leloux said.